Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different

Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

On 5 October 2011, Steve Jobs succumbed to cancer, leaving the world, as numerous people have pointed out, a more interesting place. As the co-founder of Apple Computer, Jobs was instrumental in raising the company from the doldrums in the mid-1990s, and subsequently responsible for bringing many of the iconic gadgets of our times to life.

“You’ve got to find what you love,” Jobs once said (probably in the same speech quoted earlier) and he was perhaps the perfect embodiment of that love. It sounds like a simple enough mantra to live by, but one that takes courage to implement. Steve Jobs did.